A Big Life

My story isn’t an original one. I trod the well worn path of ‘backpacking’ (albeit without a backpack) through parts of the USA, Europe and a teeny bit of Thailand, after finishing my BA in Psychology in 2007. Whilst gallavanting around, I spent two months in a small city in Germany, called Münster and a week on a small Greek island called Santorini.

I returned home well and truly bitten. I told you my story was not an original one.

In 2008, a semester into my MA in Creative Writing, I spent a summer working on Santorini. I was visited by a dear friend I had met in Münster and we plotted to fuse my desire to move to Europe with our friendship and my knowledge of her home city.

I returned home still itchy but with a plan. I was going to graduate from my MA and move to Germany, where I would teach English, see more of Europe and experience life on the other side of the globe.

Towards the end of 2009, with the end of my MA in sight, I started this blog. I was restless. I was ready. Save for a road trip around New Zealand in early 2009, I hadn’t carted a bag around a foreign country since my Santorini summer of 2008. But I had a rough departure date in mind and I had the idea of relocating to Europe fanning the flames. I knew that whatever I did, whatever I was going to do, it was all in the name of trying for a big life. So I created a place to document it all, from Sydney life in the lead up to departing, to island summers, the relocation and the travels.

And here’s what I wrote in 2009:

I have a Post-It on my desk that reads, in black texta, ‘Big Life.’ Yes, that’s actually it to the left. I’m not sure where I read it, or when I stuck it up there (judging by the curled edges, it was a while ago) but it’s a sentiment that has resonated for a long time. I want to live a Big Life. I want to pack it full. I want to travel as much as I can, read as many books and see as many films as I can. I want to write books and take pictures, make stumbling attempts at another language, eat and drink myself silly and surround myself with exciting minds.

As a writer, I am partially driven by an inherent need to document everything. So this blog is just that; documentation of my attempts to lead a Big Life and all I encounter on my way. I can’t promise spiritual epiphanies (although we can try) or a definitive guide to living, but I can promise books, beauty, travel, photography, film, writing, music and social and cultural discussion. I can promise old and new, loves and hates and a bit of good old fashioned thinking.

* Fast forward to September 2010, a year later, and I was sitting up in Germany writing about the second, long awaited chapter to this story. It’s slightly more, although not particularly, original than the prologue and it forms the basis for my current Big Life – one that will no doubt change soon. The Big Life Change. Read it here.

** Fast forward to March 2012, eighteen months later, and I am in Weiden, Bavaria. Yep, I fell in love and moved to the south east of Germany to be with the Significant German, who will be working here for a few years. And that, my friends, is the second Big Life change, the latest twist in the plot. Read about it here.